A young Rosemary McGill holds a sign as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talks to an unidentified boy during one of several marches in St. Augustine, Fla., June 10, 1964. / Associated Press

by J.D. Gallop, Florida Today

by J.D. Gallop, Florida Today

Rosemary McGill was 17 years old when the northbound Freedom Train from Florida pulled into Union Station in Washington on a hot, muggy August day in 1963.

But what the Rockledge, Fla., teen - fresh from attending a civil rights rally in St. Augustine - found that day as she walked out of the terminal left her stunned as she and thousands of others crowded side by side to attend the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

"It was a huge crowd of blacks and whites, all singing freedom songs as we marched from Pennsylvania Avenue all the way to the steps of the Lincoln Monument," McGill said. "We were marching for freedom, jobs and justice. I sat back-to-back with a white girl on a grassy knoll and helped a blind (white) man up the steps of the Lincoln monument. I was just overwhelmed with such kindness and respect. Hatred left me that day."

Five decades later, the historic March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. energized the civil rights movement with his "I Have a Dream" speech is seen by McGill and others as a critical turning point in the nation's history. It was the largest crowd to gather in the nation's capital up to that time, and it inspired countless others across the political spectrum.

McGill, along with three other teens from Brevard plus a chaperone, answered the call from pulpits and union halls across the nation to help bring attention to the plight of blacks and poor workers.

"The immediate impact of seeing all of those people together told me that we were doing something right," said McGill, who is writing an account of the march in her memoirs. "The whole world was watching us. We were on fire."

McGill said that day, Aug. 28, 1963, on the Washington Mall with more than 250,000 people - including ministers, rabbis, union leaders and folk musicians such as Peter, Paul and Mary - crystallized for many the vision that King had for America. "You had an Irish president listening to black men about having equal rights for everyone," she said.

In the march's wake came the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which dismantled state-led efforts across the South to keep blacks from casting ballots, McGill pointed out. Even the Beatles, just as their fame reached a fever pitch in 1964, put Southern concert halls on notice that they would not play to segregated audiences.

"The march gave hope to people like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, it led to civil rights legislation, allowing people like me to go to places we couldn't before," McGill said.

Last May, McGill returned to Washington, D.C. and stood with her two granddaughters on the spot where she watched King deliver his famous call to action at the Lincoln Memorial. Today McGill, the multicultural specialist at Eastern Florida State College in Mims, Fla., said that call remains as important as it ever was.

"It worked. Had we not done the march, then we could very well still be living under (segregation)," she said.